It's always exciting to see your customer's vision come to fruition. It's especially rewarding when KPIs and expectations are exceeded. We congratulate DISH Wireless for launching 5G broadband service to over 20% of the U.S. population this summer, achieving a major milestone in building America's first and only cloud-native 5G Open RAN network.

In May the DISH 5G network launched wireless service in Las Vegas. Since then, DISH has expanded service to more than 120 cities across the country. By applying a software-first approach, Open RAN and virtualization technology, DISH Wireless disrupted the market with the country's first and only cloud-native 5G Open RAN network.

Based on its complex network requirements, DISH Wireless developed a core set of principles around people, process, and technology for selecting key partners like Cisco to bring their 5G vision to reality.

Early this year, I sat down with Sidd Chenumolu, VP of Technology Development at DISH Wireless to discuss their vision for building a network that can deliver on the promise of 5G and create a more inclusive future.

"DISH has a vision to connect everything -connecting things, connecting people," he said. "Give me an architecture that's flexible enough that would allow DISH to offer any use case, any services, and not be a problem. Don't limit the architecture to a specific use case."

Check out this video for my conversation with Sidd on how together with other partners, we built a cloud native, fully automated and eventually autonomous network in record time.